SMS turns 20 years today!

The first time I got to try SMS was sometime in 1996 and I did not know the first time it was established was way back in 1984.

At that time, it was still a test. It took about 8 years more before it became a standard and the very first commercial SMS was sent out in 1992.

Engineer Neil Papworth sent the first SMS to an Orbitel 901 handset via Vodafone UK’s network in 1992: “Merry Christmas.

Here in the Philippines, Islacom first offered commercial GSM service in February 1994 while Smart was first established in 1991 by Orlando Vea (now President/CEO of Sun Cellular after PLDT bought Digitel) and started commercial service in December 1993.

Filipinos send over a billion SMS each month, contributing to an annual 7 trillion SMS sent out globally each year.

La+

Asus_Fan

First CP was a brightly colored Bosch one-liner given to me by my ex, first SMS was a Thank you to her for giving me that beauty. I’m the first among my classmates to have a cellphone way back in 1999… =]

Cindy

What jonghco mentioned expires in one day. Thus if you do not need to send a lot of text, you can end up paying more than Piso per text.
Kung mas mura pa sa piso ang text dahil sa mga promos, eh bakit hindi nila ibaba sa 80cents or 50cents ang text sa mga hindi nakaenroll? Kaya naman pala nila (meaning, tubo pa rin sila ng malaki).
The promos amount to P300 to P600/month per promo you avail which is a lot of money for many people.

pabs

Yes@ cindy, when I had my first text enabled phone from GLobe, an Ericcsson unit, with one liner screen,( it was a beautiful phone with interchangeable colored cover, I dont remember the model anymore) text was FREE, It was FREE then . Sa globe noon ang minimum load ay 250 so habang di pa nauubos ang load mo ay may libreng text ka. that was in 1998 or 1999.

kimkae77

amdg

my first GSM phone was the Nokia 8110i back in 1998. i could still remember selling my desktop PC at 30k to buy the phone. i originally wanted the Nokia Communicator but if i did i would not have extra cash for shopping. hehe. i remember buying it from Semicon coz there was no grey market that time where i lived. i could recall the two phones displayed in Semicon and really pondering heavily which one to get. thankfully i those the 8110i coz it was featured in The Matrix movie the following year.

wh@Twitter: CallMeWHA

jonas

mine was nokia 3310 because it’s smaller than the nokia 3210 and sim that time which is globe costs 700 pesos and there was a time where sun cellular provided free call for two weeks with the same network..but today sms has gone low due to the rise of mobile internet usage

pabs

My first cellphone was a motorola microtac in 1996 it was a analog phone by Piltel then, followed by a JBC analog from smart in 1997. When texting was first offered by Globe I switched to them with an ericcson unit, till now I’m still stuck with Globe since 1999 both postpaid and prepaid.